them, and indeed upon all the assembly, for what they had done. They
did not speak, but returned severally to their homes; and Masha, when
she reached her home, too frightened to cry or even to speak, sat
motionless before the swinging cradle which hung from the roof of her
cottage, and which was now empty. And Andrew durst not look at her.
Presently he left the house and sought the dwelling of the priest. The
priest let him in, and there he found Michael, who, likewise overcome
with terror and misgivings as to what had been done, had come to tell
the story.
The priest reported the whole matter to the local policeman, who in his
turn reported it to the police captain of the district, and three days
afterwards Michael, Andrew, Masha, and the others were locked up in
the prison of a neighbouring town, and a day after their arrest an old
woman of the village sought out the police captain and asked to see him.
“I was present,” she said to him, “at the slaying of the Antichrist. I
held the candle in my hands myself when the evil spirit was exorcised,
and the cause of all Russia’s trouble was destroyed. They say the Tsar
has given money to the others for having destroyed his enemy; and I,
who am poor and old, and who was there also, have received nothing. Let
me receive my due. Give me the money that the Tsar owes me, for I also
helped to slay the Antichrist.”
This story is true. It happened last September, and was recorded in the
newspapers, with many more details than I have told. And at the station
of Kozlov, as I have already related, in the government of Tambov,
between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., a railway guard told it to
myself and a newsvendor, and when he had finished telling it he sighed
and bewailed the blindness of his fellow-creatures, the peasants of
Russian villages, who, as he wisely said, had so much kindness in their
hearts, but were often led through their ignorance to do dreadful deeds.
“DIRGE IN MARRIAGE”
The following story was told me by a doctor. It happened in the village
in the government of Tambov. There was a peasant called Vichareff who
had three daughters; one of them was called Anoushka, one Douniasha,
and the third Natasha. Their father was well off, but extraordinarily
close-fisted; his thirst for land and his ambition to accumulate were
unlimited. He arranged an advantageous match for his eldest daughter,
Douniasha, and was exerting all his wits to find a husband for his
younger daughter who should be equally well-to-do, so that the two
weddings might take place on the same day, and thereby save him trouble
and expense. His third daughter was considered to be too young as yet
to marry.
Now Anoushka repeated over and over again, not without tears, that she
did not wish to be married; but her father and her mother (whose will,
always feeble, had now completely ceased to work, owing to years of
unceasing compliance with the views and the wishes of her domineering
husband) paid no attention to this.
At last Vichareff succeeded in striking a bargain with one of
his neighbours named Kroustalieff, the purport of which was that
Kroustalieff’s son, Dimitri, should marry Anoushka, in return for which
Vichareff promised to get him some horses at an unusually low price,
since Vichareff was a horse-dealer on a small scale. The bargain was
struck, and the matter was arranged, and Anoushka was told that she was
to marry Dimitri. Dimitri was a young man aged eighteen, nice-looking,
and not unintelligent; notwithstanding this, when Anoushka was informed
of the matter, she burst into a storm of tears, and declared no power
on earth could induce her to marry him. Her father and mother, however,
took no notice of her tears and her protest, and invited their friends
to an evening party to celebrate the engagement. Now the reason
Anoushka was determined not to marry Dimitri, was that she loved her
sister’s affianced husband, Ivan. He, for his part, was quite unaware
of this, and indeed nobody knew of it in the whole village except an
old man, Alexis by name, who was said to be versed in astrology and
whom the peasants often consulted in matters which concerned the other
world. Anoushka went to Alexis and told him her story; he promised
to cast her horoscope and to see what could be done, and he bade her
return to him in a few days. She did so. When Alexis saw her he shook
his head.
“There is nothing to be done, child,” he said, “the stars are against
you: you must wed Dimitri; but no good will come of it, neither to you
nor to him.”
Then Anoushka asked him if he could not give her a love philtre or a
charm, which would make Ivan love her.
“I can give you a charm,” said Alexis, “and I can give you love
philtres, but I cannot turn the stars from their courses, nor prevent
you wedding Dimitri in the church, although no good shall come of it,
either to you or to him. There is nothing to be done, save to obey;
this matter is the business of Providence.”
And so Anoushka went home, taking neither philtre nor charm, and
spent the whole day weeping at her work, but her parents did not even
trouble to scold her, so surely did they know that their will would
be accomplished. And in the evenings Ivan and Dimitri would come to
their cottage and sing and play on the Balalaika; and while Douniasha
and Ivan looked at each other with love, and spoke in whispers of
a thousand nothings, like two happy birds twittering in a tree,
Anoushka said no word to Dimitri, although he was gentle with her and
civil-spoken; and he attributed her silence and her gloomy look to
bashfulness and modesty.
When the evening of Vichareff’s party arrived, the whole village came
to his house. And some of the gentry from the landowner’s house came
to look on at the dancing. The small room of Vichareff’s cottage was
crowded to overflowing, a little space being left in the centre for
the dancers. Outside the cottage there were more people, those for
whom there was no room inside, and they crowded round the door and
windows, straining and craning their necks to get a glimpse of the
festivity. Those who were at the window, finding that the window-panes
got in their way, broke the glass and put their heads through the
empty sash. Inside, some one was playing on a large concertina, and
the dancers walked up and down the room with faces of grave and solemn
indifference, performing the necessary steps and singing the usual
chant. The couples paced to and fro opposite each other, and at the
end of every verse of the chanted music, each girl was kissed by her
partner.
When this dance was over sunflower seeds were handed round on a plate
to the guests, and glasses of tea were brought for the gentry; then a
soldier who was home on leave, performed a solo in the centre of the
room, dancing and stamping according to intricate rule, until he could
no more.
Douniasha looked radiantly happy; she was dressed in pale green, and
wore a necklace of bright beads; but Anoushka, in her pink silk finery,
looked as white as a ghost, and said no word during the whole evening.
And when Dimitri danced with her and kissed her, she seemed no more to
notice him than if he had been a phantom.
They danced all night, but never once during all those hours of mirth
and gaiety, did Anoushka smile.
Three weeks later preparations were made for the wedding. Vichareff
bought provisions; the wedding was to be a magnificent one. The
landowner lent his horses, and Anoushka and Douniasha were to be driven
to the church in two troikas. Dimitri had a new salmon-pink shirt for
the occasion, and in his high boots there was an unusual number of
creases; he appeared with pride to show himself to Anoushka, but she
took no notice of him. On her wedding day she was paler than ever, and
her eyes were red with crying. Dimitri asked her if anything was the
matter with her and whether she was not feeling well; but she said
that she was perfectly well. So he attributed her strange appearance
and ways to the inscrutable habits of womankind, and asked no further
questions. But, shortly before the wedding pairs were to leave for the
church, Anoushka went to her mother and said that she could not marry
Dimitri. Her mother said that she supposed the child had another
sweetheart; such was the way of girls. But if she had, it was of no
consequence, she said; she would soon forget him. In any case she was
to marry Dimitri, and that immediately.
Then Anoushka broke into a passion of weeping, and begged and implored
her mother not to let her marry Dimitri; and her mother lost patience,
and said she deserved to be beaten; that she never heard such nonsense
in her life.
“Now stop that crying,” she ended by saying, “or I will call your
father, and he shall put an end to this nonsense!”
Then Anoushka dried her tears and said: “Very well, since it is so, let
it be so. But I will never be Dimitri’s wife!”
Then the troikas drove up to the cottage door, their bells jangling and
tinkling, and the bridal couples all in their best clothes were driven
off at a canter to the church, and the wedding took place. And Anoushka
and Douniasha were crowned with gold crowns, and walked round the altar
(which was placed in the centre of the church with a tall candle on it)
in memory of David dancing round the Ark, according to the rite of
the Orthodox Church. After the ceremony was over, they drove home once
more and the feasting, which had already lasted one day, began again.
The two bridegrooms were taken by their friends through the village,
stopping at nearly every cottage to have their healths drunk, and to
join in the toasts, while crowds of children followed them, some of
them beating small tom-toms and scrambling every fifty yards or so for
sugar, which was thrown to them in handfuls by the bridegrooms and
their friends.
Towards the evening the bridegrooms were fairly intoxicated, although
they could both walk quite straight and speak without difficulty.
In Vichareff’s house an uproarious feast ended in general music and
dancing, which took place on the green in front of the cottage. In
the yard behind the house a special chamber, like a tent, had been
made for Anoushka, hung with pieces of striped linen. The dancing
company ultimately moved from Vichareff’s house and visited various
parts of the village, settling now here and now there, and gaining
fresh liveliness and zest at each place where it settled. Anoushka was
left alone, and shortly afterwards Dimitri returned. He went into
the cottage and saw that it was empty. He then went into the yard and
into the tent which had been prepared; and glimmering in the darkness
he saw the tall white figure of Anoushka standing up. He called to
her, but she did not answer. Being half-intoxicated he could not see
clearly, and he was not sure whether it was in reality Anoushka or not
that he seemed to see. He called once more, as loudly as he could,
and, receiving no answer, he walked up to her and grasped her by the
arm, and as he did so her whole body swung backwards and forwards as
though it were dancing on air. Then in a moment he grew sober, for he
realised that Anoushka had hanged herself, and he went and shouted for
the neighbours. The body was cut down, and efforts were made to restore
her to life, but she had already been dead about an hour, and there was
nothing more to be done.
The next day Dimitri’s father and Vichareff held a consultation;
Vichareff even said that he considered his bargain cancelled, and
Dimitri’s father, after a great deal of argument, refused to admit that
this was so. Ultimately Vichareff’s cunning mind found a way out of
the matter. “Why should not Dimitri,” he said, “marry Natasha my third
daughter? It is true she is only fifteen, but she is a good strong
girl, and will make him a good wife. And then,” he added, “we can have
the wedding at once, so that the food shall not be wasted, and we shall
thus be spared the burden and expense of two weddings.”
So this was arranged, and the priest was informed of it. But the priest
declined to celebrate the wedding, and said that such a proceeding was
unchristian and inhuman; they must be married, he said, after a decent
interval of time had elapsed.
Vichareff and Dimitri’s father were forced to comply, for public
opinion in the village was entirely on the side of the priest; but the
wedding food, so far from being wasted, did double service all the
same, for it served to satisfy the guests who thronged to Anoushka’s
funeral; so that in these days in the village there was both dirge in
marriage and mirth in funeral.
THE GOVERNOR’S NIECE
Irina Andreevna T---- was a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl aged
twenty-two. She went to lectures at the St. Petersburg University in
the daytime; in the evening she went to balls and parties. Irina was
an orphan, but she lived with an aunt of hers in a large house in St.
Petersburg, where on Thursday evenings there was always a considerable
gathering of girls and young men, officers chiefly.
When the war broke out in 1904, Irina spent all the days at the
hospital, learning to tend the sick and the wounded, and making
bandages and clothes for the soldiers at the war. In 1905, when peace
was declared, and followed by tumultuous events, she was deeply
infected by the atmosphere of excitement which prevailed everywhere,
the wild hopes and the great expectations. She went to public meetings
and attended private discussions--the private discussions of small
groups of students, men and women, which took place in private houses.
All the people who attended these informal meetings belonged, as far as
their political opinions were concerned, to the Extreme Left. Some of
them called themselves Social Democrats, others Social Revolutionaries.
Irina’s special friend belonged to the extremer shade of the latter
party. Irina’s nature was enthusiastic; she hated compromise. She
wanted all or nothing. Violent means such as terrorism or assassination
seemed to her of no account where the cause was great and the end noble.
As the months went on, she became more and more closely bound to the
more ardent spirits among the Social Revolutionaries, and they regarded
her as one of their most inspiring leaders. But she continued during
all this time to live the ordinary life of the St. Petersburg society,
to talk and dance with the young officers at evening parties, and go to
the opera, and to take part in sledging and ski-ing parties. Neither
her relations nor any of her ordinary acquaintances suspected the
intensity of the inner life that was going on within her. They knew
she was interested in politics, but so was everybody else. Her friends
chaffed her for being what they called “red”; but then a great many
people were red.
In February 1906, her uncle, General Steinberg, a brother of her
deceased father, was appointed to the Governorship of O., a large
manufacturing city. It was just at this time that she joined the branch
of the Social Revolutionaries which called themselves Maximalists,
and whose business it was to remove by violence the persons whom they
considered to be obstacles in the way of their cause. These people,
when they had decided that some one should be removed, drew lots among
themselves as to who should accomplish the deed of destruction.
It so happened that, in February 1906, the Executive Committee of
the Maximalists condemned General Steinberg to death for suppressing
certain riots in the town of O., during which affray a certain number
of workmen had been killed and wounded. Lots were drawn as to who
should kill General Steinberg--and the lot fell to Irina, his niece.
She received the decision with calm, and made preparations for leaving
St. Petersburg. She told her aunt she was going to Moscow to stay with
some intimate friends of the family: from Moscow it is but a short
distance to O. Her relations saw her off at the station, also a young
man in the regiment of the Chevalier-Gardes, who was particularly
devoted to her. She seemed in excellent spirits.
When she arrived at Moscow she went straight to O., and stayed at the
hotel, from whence she wrote a letter to her uncle saying that she was
on her way to the estate of her St. Petersburg relations, which was a
night’s journey from O. Everything was made easy for her, for the next
morning she received a letter from him asking her to come to luncheon
at half-past twelve.
The next morning at the appointed time she started off in a sledge to
the Governor’s house, wrapped in a fur _shuba_, and in her muff was
concealed a small dynamite bomb capable of enormous destruction.
Her uncle greeted her with the utmost simplicity and affection. He was
a short, grey-haired man between fifty and sixty, with a thick grey
moustache and kind blue eyes. He was a widower and had no children. He
took her into his sitting-room.
“My dear little Irina,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks, “it is
years since I’ve seen you; I should not have recognised you, you’ve
grown into such a lovely grown-up creature. It is lucky that I have
been appointed here, just on your way to X. (the country estate of
Irina’s relations), but why did you go to the hotel? Another time you
must stay here. And mind, I expect to see you often now; you must stop
here every time you go to X. There is always plenty of room in this old
barrack of a house. But come, we will go and have something to eat.”
And he took her into the dining-room. “We shall be quite alone,” he
said. “It is better, isn’t it? When you were a little girl, when we
were all at X. together, you used to love pancakes; you never could
have enough; so I’ve had some made to-day. And my cook understands how
to make them properly.”
Irina blurted out a few confused phrases. Her uncle could not get
over the fact that she was grown up; that she was a tall and pretty
girl. He took her to the window to observe her properly, and he kept
on making exclamations of admiration and surprise. Then he led her to
the sideboard, and chose out for her titbits among the hot and cold
_zakouski_ (hors-d’oeuvre) that were there.
“It does one good,” he said, “to see a face like yours in this
detestable hole. I can’t tell you what a life it is. One never has a
moment’s peace, and nobody is satisfied. There are fifteen or sixteen
different parties in the town, all quarrelling. I have to settle
everything. There are Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, Social
Revolutionaries, Maximalists, Minimalists, merchants, students, Jews,
anti-Jews, Reactionaries, the Alliance of the Russian People--all
fighting against each other, and all appealing to me to settle their
difficulties; and if one does manage to keep things smooth, what
thanks does one get from the Government? Absolutely none. The other
day all the Reactionaries, the Alliance of the Russian People, and so
forth, met together and sang the National Hymn and collected a crowd
of hooligans, and went to set fire to the school. I had to go down and
make a speech to them, and it was with the greatest difficulty I got
them away.
“Then the other day there was a man called Savin, who was arrested for
making revolutionary propaganda among the troops. He sent and appealed
to me to be allowed to go and see his son, who, he said, was dying of
scarlet fever. I gave him permission, and it turned out that the son
had not got scarlet fever at all; that the whole thing was a pretext;
and he took advantage of the occasion to shoot a policeman and to get
away. The result of this is that the Reactionaries here say I am a
Revolutionary, and, of course, the Revolutionaries say I’m a satrap and
a brutal oppressor, and all the rest of it. But it doesn’t matter what
one does, it is impossible to satisfy any one. And every day I receive
threatening letters from both sides: letters from people telling me I
am a traitor to my country, that I am sold to the Jews and in league
with England and all the Continental finance; and others saying that I
am an executioner, and the enemy of freedom and of light. However, why
should I bore you with all these stories? Let’s talk of more cheerful
things.”
They sat down at the table.
“Here are the pancakes,” he said. “The country is turned upside down,
but we have to go on eating pancakes just the same, don’t we? The best
thing is not to think at all in times like this.”
Irina looked at him and smiled; she found it difficult to speak. But he
did not give her much opportunity, for he went on gaily, talking first
about one thing, then about another--of the coming elections, of the
plays that were being acted in St. Petersburg and Moscow, of the modern
literature and its hysterical tendencies; and he told many amusing
anecdotes illustrating the strange anomalies and the curious ideas that
were rife in the present condition of things.
When they had finished eating, he said: “Now, you must come into my own
sitting-room, where no one is allowed to disturb me, and I will have at
least a half-hour of human intercourse before I go back to my convict’s
existence; because, you know, my dear, a Governor’s life is worse than
a convict’s. At least, a convict does not have to make up his mind
twenty hundred times a day about questions which cannot be solved at
all.”
He led her into his sitting-room, which was as simply furnished as
possible: it contained a large writing-table and a low divan; the
carpets had holes in them; there was a gramophone and a small piano.
“That gramophone,” he said, “is my one consolation. When I am tired
I turn it on and listen to gipsy songs and to Caruso.” He hummed a
tune from an Italian opera. “It’s a beautiful gramophone; you must
hear it,” and he fixed a Caruso record on it which sang a song from
_Cavalleria Rusticana_. When this was over he talked on for about
twenty minutes, of the memories of his youth, of his travels, and many
trifling episodes concerning their common relations and acquaintances.
Presently he looked at his watch. “My time is really up,” he said,
“and now I want to talk to you seriously. You know, Irina, I am alone
in the world, and you have got no parents either; so that in a kind of
way I look upon myself as your father, and I want you to treat me like
a father. I want you to come here whenever you like and to confide in
me if ever you have anything that troubles you in any way. And I will
always be ready to do anything I can for you; because, you know, little
Irina, I am very, very fond of you. And now, I’m afraid my time is up,
and I must go back to my work.”
He kissed her on both cheeks, and made the sign of the cross on her
face. “God bless you,” he said.
Irina left the house, and the General rang for his aide-de-camp and
settled down to his work.
Ten minutes later a loud explosion was heard in the street where the
hotel was situated at which Irina had stopped. She had thrown her bomb,
but the street was empty at the time, and she had killed no one save
herself.
A POLICE OFFICER
It was the fourth day of the armed rising in Moscow. Early in the
morning some of the shops had opened, especially the tobacconists, and
there had been a certain amount of movement in the streets; but later
on, towards noon, a stillness had again descended on the city. From the
centre of the town came the noise of artillery, and in the side streets
one heard a ceaseless clicking of firing, though one could not tell
whence it came or where it was going on.
At half-past six in the evening, when Alexander Petrovitch Pavlov, a
police officer, went home to dinner, all the city seemed empty, quiet
and deserted, yet at the same time full of an intermittent, unwonted
noise. He went down the Square from the Governor’s house where he had
had business, past the Hotel Dresden, and stopped to say a few words to
the policeman there on duty. The policeman, in reply to some question
he had vaguely asked (for Alexander Petrovitch was tired, sick of the
whole business and discouraged by what seemed to him to be a tissue of
absurdities), said: “They are fools, little fools--nothing will come of
it.” He did not pay much attention to this; he was thinking how absurd
the whole matter was, and what a nuisance these abnormal upheavings
were when they were prolonged.